Abstract:
On the 14th April 1866, Dr. I.E. Featherston, Superintendent of the Wellington Province, accepted in his capacity of Land Purchase Commissioner a tract of land known as the Manawatu-Rangitikei Block. He accepted the land from an assembly representing the following tribes: Muaupoko,.Ngatiapa, Ngatitoa, Rangitane, Ngatiraukawa, Whanganui, Ngatiawa, Ngatikahungunu, and Ngatipokoiri. Of these tribes only four could claim to have any interest in the block, these being Muaupoko, Ngatiapa, Rangitane and Ngatiraukawa. However the whole assembly was asked by Dr. Featherston to give or withold their consent to the sale, and when all but Ngatiraukawa were found to be unanimously in favour of the sale, made it quite clear that the will of such a large majority could not be thwarted by a section of one tribe. He therefore accepted the block from the assembled tribes.
The purpose of this thesis is first to show that when Dr. Featherston spoke of a section of one tribe (Ngatiraukawa) he was emphasising an apparent, not a real, unanimity among the owners of the block. In other words the fact that the other tribes approved of the sale was of very little importance, when some of the Ngatiraukawa, which had the overwhelmingly greatest, if not exclusive claim to the block, were divided on the question of selling the land. This thesis is, then, in the first place an attempt to show that the Ngatiraukawa tribe owned the Manawatu-Rangitikei Block.
